For most of us, dining out is a treat. We don’t expect the people taking care of us to be cheated out of their pay.

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That’s what’s happening in too many restaurants, according to state investigators, private attorneys and advocates for workers’ rights.

Recent wage theft investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division detailed how two South Florida restaurants set up illegal payment schemes to avoid paying overtime rates to workers who toiled more than 40 hours a week.

In the end, rather than saving money, South China Restaurant in Cooper City and Lallo's in Lauderhill were forced to cough up tens of thousands of dollars in back wages. Lallo's also paid $11,455 in civil penalties for the "willful nature" of the violations.

But they're far from the only restaurants caught cheating their workers.

In the Tampa area, the division conducted 350 investigations in 2018, finding more than $1 million in back wages and additional damages for more than 1,500 employees, that division announced. Comparable tallies for the South Florida division have not been compiled, a spokesman said.

“Restaurant workers are among the most vulnerable that we see,” said Daniel White, the division’s Jacksonville district director, in a news release about a 2016 wage theft investigation. “When these workers aren’t paid every penny they have rightfully earned, it harms not just the workers, but their families, and their communities.”

Of course, not all restaurants cheat their workers. The Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association believes that violators “are the exception and not the rule,” the association’s press secretary, Amanda Handley, said in a written response to questions about the issue.

“We fully expect and encourage our members (and all businesses) to comply with the law and to pay employees what they are rightfully owed,” Handley said, adding that paying employees anything but what they are owned would be a disservice to workers who are literally the faces of the state’s largest industry — hospitality.

Complex wage laws

As simple as running a restaurant might look to customers, laws and policies governing the ways restaurant workers get paid are anything but simple, says Laura Huizar, senior staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project, a non-profit organization that advocates for protections for low-wage and unemployed workers.

“Systems in place now for calculating tipped wages and minimum wages are very complicated, not only for employers, but for employees to keep track of to ensure they are being paid fairly,” Huizar said. “In many ways, it’s a system designed to be abused, and that’s what we’re seeing.”

In South Florida, charges of wage and tip theft by restaurant owners show up frequently in federal civil court filings and typically end with the owners agreeing to confidential settlements, says Peter Bober of the Hollywood-based law firm Bober & Bober P.A., which specializes in such cases.

Owners get in trouble because they think they can write their own rules for how workers get paid, Bober said.

“A lot of people think that because they own the business, they can pay less than minimum wage,” he said. “That’s not true.”

A suit filed in May by a waitress at Oakland Park-based Mom’s Kitchen claims she has been paid a flat rate of $75 a week, or $15 a day, over the past three years, even though she has been working at the restaurant since 2000. As a result, the waitress often fails to earn the federal minimum hourly wage, currently $8.46 in Florida, according to the suit filed by USA Employment Lawyers — Jordan Richards, PLLC, of Fort Lauderdale.

Mom’s Kitchen is denying the waitress’ charges, according to a response filed in the case.

Restaurants that comply with all other regulations can take what’s called a “tip credit” of $3.02 an hour off of a state’s minimum wage paid to tipped employees such as servers and bartenders, Bober said. Non-tipped employees such as dishwashers, cooks and janitors must be paid at least full minimum wage.

But for servers who don’t earn $8.46 during any hour of their shift, restaurants are required to pay the difference until that server’s pay reaches the full minimum wage.

Restaurants must inform employees that they’re taking the tip credit, Bober said. If they don’t, they can be found ineligible to have taken it and be forced to pay the $3.02 difference for every hour that an employee worked there for up to five years, Bober said.

“It’s simple but frequently glossed over and not discussed by management,” he said. And if one longtime server can attest they weren’t notified that management was taking a tip credit, chances are his coworkers weren’t notified either, and the restaurant could be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Bober said. “A single case can put a company out of business. The numbers are staggering.”

Overtime and tip theft

Failure to pay overtime rates — equal to 1.5 times the base hourly wage — is another common cheat, according to Bober.

A May lawsuit against Strathmore Bagel & Deli's parent company by former employee Neil Gitterman states that Gitterman sometimes worked 20 hours of overtime a week at the eatery's Wellington location. Although he would receive a paycheck for the first 40 hours of work, he would be paid in cash for the overtime at the normal hourly rate.

In its response to the suit, the restaurant denied the charges and said Gitterman never made managers aware he was working more hours than authorized.

Other ways restaurant owners cut costs is underpaying cooks and dishwashers and forcing servers to make up the difference by contributing a share of their tips.

A 2016 investigation by the Wage and Hour Division prompted the owners of a Jacksonville Beach-based Metro Diner franchise to pay $154,179 in back wages to 59 employees for, among other violations, requiring the employees to share their tips with non-tipped employees, including dishwashers and cooks.

“Requiring servers to subsidize wages of people in the back of the house — that’s tip theft,” Bober said. “I’ve sued many companies for that.”

Restaurants are allowed to require tip sharing only if they pay all of their workers — including servers and bartenders — the full minimum wage for each hour worked, under an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act enacted in 2018. In other words, if restaurants require servers to share their tips with cooks and dishwashers, they can’t take the $3.02 tip credit.

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But the new amendment forbids management from claiming a portion of servers’ tips for themselves or for the company. That means managers can no longer wait on a few tables to claim a share of a tip pool. And they can’t make bartenders cough up tip money to cover cash register shortfalls or credit card transaction fees.

What patrons can do

How widespread wage and tip theft actually is throughout the restaurant industry is difficult to pinpoint, says Anthony Advincula, public affairs officer for Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an advocacy organization that wants to eliminate the tip credit and pay all restaurant workers full minimum wage.

“Most workers don’t complain out of fear or feeling like [what they have to say] isn’t going to fly anyway," he said.

To keep their employers honest, the group encourages workers to document everything about their pay — how much they receive in their checks, what their employers deduct for taxes and tip credits, and when they begin and finish their shifts, Advincula said.

Employees who believe they are being cheated can file a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which has offices in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and West Palm Beach. Go to www.doj.whd

Broward and Miami-Dade counties each offer mediation services to help resolve wage disputes.

Patrons can help to combat wage and tip theft by speaking to workers, Huizar says, “and learning more about what their lives are like and what their pay systems are like." She suggests that patrons "talk with employees about what they are seeing and what their concerns are.”

No such law is currently proposed in Florida. Any effort to create one would be opposed by the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, Handley said.

Servers and bartenders oppose the idea, she said, because it would represent a pay cut for many of them. “Further, because hospitality is such a driving force in our state, we continue to see members who pay their staff well above both minimum wage and well above the cash wage in order to retain good talent,” she said.

Common ways restaurants cheat employees

Requiring servers and/or bartenders to share tips with non-tipped employees, such as cooks and dishwashers, to reduce what they have to pay those employees.

Paying “salaries” to avoid having to pay employees overtime.

Paying employees by check for 40 hours and by cash for at normal hourly pay for additional hours to avoid paying overtime rates.

Giving workers fancy titles like “manager” to justify putting them on a salary and avoid paying overtime.

Classifying employees as independent contractors rather than full-time employees to avoid paying overtime.

Requiring workers to come in before shift begins and continue to work after shift ends without pay.

Paying a tipped wage for non-tipped work, like rolling silverware or polishing glassware.

Docking employees for meal breaks they don’t take.

Refusing to give worker who quits a final paycheck.

Paying absolutely nothing to workers (usually undocumented immigrants) and allowing them to work for tips only. Even undocumented workers must be paid overtime and minimum wage.